The Driskel Collection

Theoretically, the upward limit for the storage of drawn blood is not much more than a month when refrigerated, and only about a decade (under ideal circumstances) when frozen. But there are chemical compounds known to certain research circles—those associated with the Weird Science of the Necromancers—that can be used to store whole blood indefinitely, albeit with certain modifications to the blood itself. These additives cause strange changes within the red cells of the stored blood, while simultaneously imbuing them with an odd supernatural aura. To the Necromancers, this is an insignificant side effect of being able to store whole blood at room temperature without any risk of spoilage. To anyone else, the potential risk would be… troubling.

Or nearly anyone else.

There is a story circulated in the supernatural underground of San Cipriano concerning a renegade medical researcher named Doctor Francis Xavier Driskel, who lived in the city from the post-war 1940s until the Cold War 1960s. Driskel was on the fringes of the Necromancer network, associating also with Adepts and other beings, and he was a firm proponent of the notion that “the blood is the life.” He had an obsession with drawing blood samples from all kinds of specimens, both willing and unwilling and supernatural and mortal, and using Necromantic compounds to keep them fresh for experiments that were not yet possible in his own time. Driskel was particularly interested in the fruits of Miescher’s discovery of DNA in the 1860s and Crick and Watt’s isolation of DNA’s double helix structure in the 1950s. He felt confident that the conventional scientific world would unlock DNA’s secrets in the near future, and if he had a broadly representative set of samples on hand, he might take advantage of this.

Unfortunately, Driskel was viciously slaughtered by escaped test subjects in his basement laboratory in 1964, and his home and workspace were burned to ash by a fire started when equipment was damaged and tables full of chemicals were overturned. Driskel’s notes were destroyed as well—all except a cryptic letter to a now-deceased cousin, in which Driskel stated that his collection of 718 key blood samples was stored secretly off site in sealed test tubes.

In the decades since then, many rumors have floated through the dark places of San Cipriano regarding the Driskel Collection. Some believe it was found and claimed by the Necromancers, others by the Myrmidon Shapeshifters, and others by wastrel Vampires. It is said that Loa Masters gained control of some very important people with the Driskel Collection, using the blood for sympathetic magick, and also that there is a cabal of Revenants that want to find the Collection in order to enhance their species’ amazing abilities even further.

If the Driskel Collection still exists, claimed or unclaimed, it is believed to be an incredible repository of genetic material, supernatural potential and shadowy history. There are surely those will pay dearly—or kill—to obtain it…